Encouragement was a word of the day at camp.
Naturally, it seemed like something I should teach, so obviously I was like boom. This is me, this is what I do right?
And, there I was about to work on it, and it was kind of like hmmm…. Wait a minute. Encourage. This is on me, this is what I do, so I have to be superb at teaching this to fifth graders. I have to be good at this no matter who I’m teaching, from 5 to 55.
Eventually I started thinking about the pressure I put on myself to be this awesome encourager and the difficulty that can be. It’s just like with writing. Any time a writing thing comes up you think oh I need to be the one to write the program or teach the writing assignment because this is what I do. You start to think I am a writer so I have to be the best at this.
The same thing happens when it comes to encouraging people because I love to do that and now that the opportunity to teach that is here I feel like I have to be the best.
It’s interesting that when we feel like we excel at something or we’re good at something, that thing that we feel like we’re so good at can so easily take over us. We can so easily allow ourselves to be bogged down in making it perfect and making it just right that we miss the beauty in it just being what it is.
I so want to be the best encourager, and I so want to be the best writer that I completely weigh myself down. I sometimes forget why I want to do it. I forget what I love about doing these things. And I have to remind myself to be careful. There is nothing wrong with excelling at a task. There is nothing wrong with being good at a task. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to continue with what you are good at. But don’t want to be good at it so badly that you miss why you loved doing it in the first place.
Don’t pressure yourself so much that you miss the essence of it all. You don’t have to be the best at it to do what you love, you just love it. Sometimes we forget that the beauty in doing what we love is simply the fact that we do it because we love it.